Why does survival of the species have very little to do with ethics? — TheMadFool

It’s merely a prerequisite. Suppose you thought about what would be good for all living things, not just humans. Then you could logically conclude that humans are bad for other living things, and that we should all kill ourselves. That would surely be absurd to most people who think that people have intrinsic value (which they do have).

Valuing individuals is at the heart of ethics. Of course, without the survival of the species, there would be no individuals. That is all that survival of the species has to do with ethics. Ethics deals with “how we should treat one another” (now that we find ourselves here due to survival of the species).

I think it is, mind and brain are intimately connected, and where else would it be located? — Wheatley

It has been said that the gut is the second brain. Consciousness occurs in at least some living creatures. Why couldn’t it pervade the universe? What you call cognitive science might not be all that there is. You might say science explains everything. I might say that science is a method to try to explain things. It’s a paradigm. Why am I wrong in saying that consciousness orders the universe giving us the laws of nature? How do you explain where the order comes from? How do you explain that the universe is at all explainable?

there's little doubt that seeking pleasure and avoiding pain is aimed at survival. — TheMadFool

There are so many ways that people can have pleasure and avoid pain that are not suited to optimal survival, though. Heroin to avoid pain, and overeating or promiscuous sex to gain pleasure come to mind. I think you mean “survival of the species”. As long as there is the right amount of promiscuousness, and the children live long enough and become healthy enough to become breeders, then the species will survive.

As far as the category error that @Wayfarer was suggesting, survival of the species has very little to do with ethics. It is a bare minimum prerequisite for sure, but that’s all.

I have a good psychiatrist now. Two in a row! I’ve seen 12 psychiatrists since I was 19, and most of them were checked out emotionally from their jobs. They just didn’t act like humans who cared.

I thought at one time I would be happier and healthier in an institution. I don’t think so anymore.

I would miss my wife, mother, and boys. They are a headache sometimes, but I am, too.

I'm in the same boat or rather I know, that I am mentally ill. — Wallows

I’m not mentally ill. I just don’t fit into a society that has diagnosed me as “mentally ill” due to the reality that there is no place for me here. One psychiatrist told me to try heroin and that he hoped he wouldn’t see me again after I told him I was suicidal one time. He was probably stressed out because he was in the middle of a child porn and patient abuse trial at the time which was unbeknownst to me. Another psychiatrist threatened to have me committed if I didn’t take my medications. That’s because they thought I was too violent or dangerous or something. The cops who were friends with the guy who came to my house with his friend to beat me up and left with his ass kicked by me were lying to her (the psychiatrist) about me as revenge, this a part of the constant harassment I’ve received for the last 16 years from the cops and contributing to my suicidal ideations. Funny that I also got made fun of at school when I was 14 for nearly getting beaten to death by a 16 year old, a kid who faced zero consequences because neither I nor my parents called the authorities. I missed two weeks of school, and I have a crooked nose to this day. Oh well.

We’re not “mentally ill”. There is nearly limitless neuro-diversity. Mental illness only exists because they don’t know what to do with us. Maybe they should start by treating us with some dignity instead of like useless trash. Also funny that if you don’t help out with producing garbage or bullshit services that speed up the death of our now habitable planet, then you are “useless” or a “parasite”. Oh well.

Well, thanks for blatantly ignoring me. Anyway, I don’t care if you think I’m crazy. It happened to me. It also happened to the US diplomats in Cuba. They may suffer permanent brain damage due to the attacks. Also, go fuck yourself, you smug prick.

Total self awareness

Some of the people I met in my psych unit were the most caring, compassionate, intelligent, and warm people I ever met in my life. — Wallows

I have found the same thing in my stays on psychiatric units. No one is more empathetic and caring for people who are down and out than the mentally ill.

Personally, I get agitated having to spend extended periods of time with “stable” people. Here in Wisconsin, there truly aren’t that many “stable” people, just a lot of religious fundamentalists and angry alcoholics. Both of these groups need treatment, but they don’t know it. They make life a living hell for people like you and me, and they call us “weak” and “psychos”. In reality, you and I, Wallows, are the strong ones because we know how people truly think and feel, and we are always aware of this, while those other people live in their solipsistic bubbles without ever realizing how their behavior affects those around them.

Stay strong. You are a beautiful person.

The Russians used microwave weapons against diplomats in Cuba a few years back. At least US intelligence figured it was the Russians. Nearly all countries’ intelligence agencies can insert voices and cause sharp pains in unsuspecting victims’ heads using microwave weapons. This is not new.

I suspect that these weapons have been used on the mentally ill to hone their use and effectiveness. A lot of the symptoms listed by Brett are symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia and side effects from their medication, but some of them are the effects of these microwave weapons.

Does anyone remember the attacks on the US diplomats in Cuba a few years back?

Yes

I have a nice home that my mother helped my wife and I get. It’s in a small town in the upper Midwest, the middle of nowhere. I make bad inferences about people in general when I encounter assholes like Hanover, but there are plenty of good people here. I just need to focus on them.

Difficult situation. Have you given any thought of relocating? Canada is a nice country. — god must be atheist

Canada seems like a great country, but the US is my home. Nobody’s gonna drive me out of my home.

You did not beat him up because he did your friend's or wive's gf. You beat him up in self-defence. There is nothing wrong with that. — god must be atheist

This is true. I have been listening to the harassers for too long. They just wanted revenge, and they couldn’t get it any other way than to soil my reputation. I started to believe their lies.

One more point about that night in late 2003. After I threatened Troy and told him never to come to my house again, his friend called back and said, “You fucked up.” They showed up at my door in less than an hour. His friend hit me in the eye with a fist full of rings.

Now I might have been diagnosed with psychosis, but Troy and his friends are alcoholics who drink all day every day. He showed up drunk and ready to kick my ass that night. He left with his ass kicked.

Psychotic or not, I speak the truth. Alcoholics tend to be assholes. I’m only an asshole when I’m stressed out. I’ve been mostly stressed out my entire life. I only find peace when I have been left alone for significant periods of time. That’s why I tend to stay home alone.

What you say about surveillance is probably true. They watch me to keep me safe. People slander my name every day. They have to watch me to know what’s true and what’s not. I had realized this a while back, but somehow I recently forgot.

If you acknowledge you might not have been just, then the fact you feel no guilt only means you lack a conscience. That is yet another factor I must consider when I'm weighing his credibility against yours when considering the OP of whether you were just. — Hanover

My conscience is clear concerning Troy. Talk about projection. If anyone on this forum lacks a conscience, it’s clearly you. You don’t empathize with anyone, and certainly not Troy. I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to get my goat. People here might pretend to like you because they think you are funny, but if people really knew you in real life, I would bet that no one would trust you with their pet rock. You are so transparent.

I could be completely wrong of course and just looking for an interesting twist, but I've decided to be his lawyer, not yours in this 16 year old saga. — Hanover

Good for you. He deserved the beating, and I feel no guilt.

As far as the ongoing pissing match, appeal to authority is generally a poor argument and can itself be a fallacy. Experts validate their credentials through the inherent strength of their actions or arguments, they don't rely on them for validation. — Pantagruel

No argument from me.

Unfortunately the term God invokes strong prejudices on both sides. So replace god with ? and I'd agree. The cosmic unknown maybe? — Pantagruel

Of course. Many people have had bad experiences with religion, especially the Christian religion. I think that is mainly the fault of the preachers and evangelists. “God” shouldn’t invoke such resentment from so many people. I think it’s bad experiences with believers that make God so controversial. “God” is just a term when it comes down to it. Even believers in God know nothing of what He is like. If you want to call it the “cosmic unknown” to avoid controversy with your atheistic acquaintances, then have at it.

Experiencing God is inherently a private phenomenon. One can have an experience of God that is impossible to prove or even convey to others. Another person might have such an experience and attribute it to hallucinations or wishful thinking. Almost all of us have had some kind of experience that we cannot explain without invoking God or explaining it away as neurons firing in the brain.

Why is it so much better to explain an experience as hallucinations or wishful thinking than to accept it as an experience of God? If you’re a physicalist, then you would call it a hallucination. If you believe that consciousness is an essential part of existence, then you are probably more open to God. Neither philosophy is provable. I happen to find one of the two more compelling personally.

This is what my morality demands. — David Mo

Carry on then.

You'll forgive me if I don't go any further, but I am tired too of arguing with the Zionists about the same obvious things. — David Mo

Why are you so up in arms about the Jews? I’m not a Zionist, but I think it’s disingenuous to say the Palestinians are so innocent.

If the Palestinians had the military and police force that the Israelis have, you’d better believe they’d be doing the same if not worse.

Where was your outrage when the Americans killed two million Vietnamese?

Or when the Nazis killed twenty-seven million Russians?

My point is that war is terrible, but war is basically the status quo in human history. People are and always have been awful.

Best to get a hobby.

Love is wanting someone in your life for the long haul, and them feeling the same way about you. Period. End of story.

It was kind of a sick joke, but a real worry of mine. I’m not at all happy to be environmentally aware. We will soon have fresh water shortages across the globe, over fishing the oceans, factory farming runoff into the waterways, pollution, pollution, pollution, more extreme weather events causing flooding and droughts (it’s already happening and speeding up every year) which will fuck with the food supply, even more famine, and many other problems that I’m sure we’re not even aware of.

No. I’m not looking forward to it.

But you’re not suggesting there is peacetime in the Middle East right now, are you?

No argument from me.

hoping for a plague to kill billions? — fishfry

Did I say I hoped for this? That’s disingenuous if not libel. We are all fucked, and you and I are going down with the ship whether we like it or not. There are no solutions to our problems. Burying your head in the sand, well, “ignorance is bliss” as they say.

Overpopulation is a myth. I hope you at least glanced at the two links I gave, which make the case that the real problem is underpopulation. You illustrate the problem I have with many environmentalists. You dream of billions of people dying a horrible death. The other poster wants the population halved in fifty years. Environmentalism is literally a death cult. — fishfry

I think you’re “literally” delusional. This from someone who gets accused of being delusional by many all the time mind you, so take anything I say as you wish.

I don't see why they couldn't live in Palestine/Israel. They have lived there alongside other religions in relative peace, until people starting getting funny ideas about who else was allowed to live there. — Tzeentch

Like I said earlier, most people can live side by side in relative peace; the normal, everyday, working for the man people. It’s only when the demagoguery of the leaders take over does all the shit get fucked up. They are really good at this, viz. fucking shit up for everyone else while hording wealth and power for themselves.

What would you think if a foreign power forced you to give up half your home to take in a Yemeni refugee family? How would you behave if your child was beaten by Yemenis for protesting? Think about it.

The genocide of the Jews during World War II was one of the most (if not "the" most) horrible genocides of the 20th century. Not only the Nazis but many conservative people collaborated with it. Sometimes with an intensity that surprised the Nazis (the Croatian Ustashi, for example). But nothing like this can be expected in contemporary Europe or America. Zionism was an ultra-nationalistic response that came especially from the refugees of Eastern Europe. It was not in the majority before World War II. And now Zionism has other different roots that must be related to US policy in West Asia. This is not a question of justice, but of power. — David Mo

I understand all of your points, but what about the Anglo-American pact to carve up and take over the Middle East after WWII? Surely they are to blame for just as many atrocities. Perhaps that’s a discussion for another thread, but “don’t point out the moat in another’s eye when there is a beam in yours” and all that.

If you didn't call for active murder, then I apologize for imputing that stance to you. But on your overall idea of a one-child policy and halving the world population. you could not be more wrong. My criticisms of radical environmentalism stand. Your "ideal" world of 50 years hence would consist of billions of old people with nobody to support them. Active extermination would be less cruel. — fishfry

Like I was saying elsewhere on this forum, overpopulation and the destruction of natural habitats and the ecosystems that support us is only one seemingly unsolvable problem. There are many others we face, too many to name it seems. Perhaps nature will take care of it for us with a new type of plague. Either that or the world leaders will inevitably and surely come up with some inhumane solution that protects them at the expense of the property-less.

-

See my posts above. I would like to hear your thoughts on this.

You could say that the Jews are a traumatized people. It is understandable if you understand such things that there would be a collective rage. Likewise the Muslims in the Middle East are terrorized by US and NATO forces, for decades even.

New legislation entrenched discrimination against non-Jewish citizens. Israeli forces killed more than 290 Palestinians, including over 50 children; many were unlawfully killed as they were shot while posing no imminent threat to life. Israel imposed an illegal blockade on the Gaza Strip for the 11th year in a row, subjecting approximately 2 million inhabitants to collective punishment and exacerbating a humanitarian crisis. Freedom of movement for Palestinians in the West Bank remained restricted through a system of military checkpoints and roadblocks. Israeli authorities unlawfully detained within Israel thousands of Palestinians from the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), holding hundreds in administrative detention without charge or trial. Torture and other ill-treatment of detainees, including children, remained pervasive and was committed with impunity. Israel continued to demolish Palestinian homes and other structures in the West Bank and in Palestinian villages inside Israel, forcibly evicting residents. The Israeli justice system continued to fail to adequately ensure accountability and redress for victims of grave violations of international humanitarian and human rights law. The authorities continued to deny asylum seekers access to a fair or prompt refugee status determination process; hundreds of African asylum-seekers were deported and thousands were threatened with deportation. Conscientious objectors to military service were imprisoned. — Amnesty International Report

I did not know all of this. Sickening to say the least. It is inexcusable. Where should the Jews go, though? They are seemingly not welcome anywhere in the world.

And the stigma would have kept most of them in the closet. — Coben

The stigma and how the mentally ill and traumatized get treated by society at large has a lot to do with their sometimes antisocial behaviors. Medicate them and shove them out the door is the cheapest way to deal with them, as this is truly a greedy, almost Satanic society (whether or not you believe in Satan as a being).

I’m not saying that the Israelis are entitled to that land. But then again, could you blame them? They are always the first group to be persecuted when societies decay, so it was a logical place to settle (however bloody the takeover was). Palestinians are likewise as a group prone to prejudice against Jews and may or may not have welcomed such a large influx of a despised people.

Palestinians also have claim to that land of course. I’m not denying that.

That’s an unfortunate truth.

I suppose you’ll have to trust me when I say that no one needs support in a confrontation with the forum clown. — praxis

I trust you when you say that. I’m consistently reading into things that others don’t see. My doc says my mind plays tricks on me, but my ability to read people seems to me to work most of the time.

Cops are not supposed to be either. Their job is to try to prevent and investigate crime. Justice comes later.

What you described has nothing to do with the police organization as such. It is just a bunch of bullies taking advantage of the fact that they wear uniforms. — Sir2u

It would be healthier for me to view it this way. Thanks.

LoL. I thought godmustbeatheist was addressing that to me originally. I wrongly inferred that you were sticking up for me. I should’ve known better.

Don't be ridiculous. They're trying to make it as hard as possible to vote in some states. Republicans are doing all they can to suppress the votes and gerrymander because they see the trends.

I used to think as you do, and not vote. I hated all the propaganda trying like "Vote or Die" and the like. But I was wrong. Especially in swing states, you most certainly should vote. It's not the only thing that matters -- we can do much more than voting -- but in a country as powerful as ours, it matters and should be the minimum. — Xtrix

You may be right. I waver. Do I want a country where children are put in cages, where we are divided by the demagogues into racial divisions, where pre-existing conditions aren’t covered, where the President openly acts like a king, where right-wing judges rule the land, etc. etc.? No. Will anything change for me personally? No. But at least I can say I did the communal thing. Perhaps I will vote.